SPONSORED
601 SE Hawthorne Blvd.
Portland, OR 97214
At WildCraft Studio School, students are encouraged to get their hands dirty, whether that means ending up with palms smudged with colorful paints from marbling, fingers stained deep blue from dyeing with indigo, or nails packed with dirt from foraging for wild mushrooms. Founder Chelsea Heffner created this small business in 2013 to inspire creativity and deepen understandings of the Pacific Northwest through hands-on experiences. At the time, “there were very few other craft schools offering high-level education in a format that was accessible to working professionals,” Heffner says. So she debuted one- and two-day workshops on the weekends to allow people to try new skills in a fun, relaxed environment. Today, the school’s offerings include traditional crafts, Native American arts, foraging, herbal medicine, and seasonal natural dye courses taught by knowledgeable craftspeople and artists at its studios in Portland, Oregon and White Salmon, Washington—and at off-site classrooms including farms, forests, beaches, and deserts. “For WildCraft, it’s not just about that handcrafted product a student leaves with at the end of a workshop,” she says. “It’s about how the materials, process, and technique used to create that product reflect the bigger story of place, culture, history, and the legacy of ‘women’s work.’”
We have a reputation for finding excellent teachers with obscure knowledge and paying those teachers a living wage for their work.